Intrigue (I Want To Know You)
by Music and Angels
Summary: "Sasha's voice was meek as she asked Michelle if she drove people away." It's storming in Paradise and Sasha runs to the Flowers' guest house to find recluse in the new dance teacher. Michelle realizes that maybe she needs someone, too-even if she's ancient compared to 'kids these days'. The 2 girls come to see that they're the roof over the others' head when it all rains down.


Purple polka-dotted pajama set on, Michelle walked out of her closet with every intention of numbing her brain and hibernating for the winter. She was tying the strings in a bow on her plaid bottoms when a clap of thunder struck, then lightning blinded her for a minute.

"Well, well, well, look who's getting atypical," She mused aloud, grinning; talking to the inanimate town of Paradise which up until Michelle's arrival (the stripper from Tahoe!) had been home to only a handful dynamic characters; most of them living off of the thrill of sneaking in a graham cracker between dance recitals (Ginny) or using fuchsia tulle instead of pink for the studio's production of Swan Lake to see if Madame Fanny would notice (Truly). She hadn't.

Honestly, Michelle hadn't even noted the weather to be interesting, or anything of a change whatsoever. There was no out-of-the-ordinary ascension or decline in Paradise, its devout historical society made sure of that. The temperatures were disappointingly predictable. Nothing but stereotypical summer days when she'd initially moved in, and a steady chill creeping in until the groundhog called for warmth again. Here she was in April, showers abounding, and it hadn't even snowed once all winter. Michelle once made the mistake of complaining about the weather's dull plateau, forgetting that she was talking to a daredevil surfer who thrived off of constant climates and relied on 'chances of precipitation', whatever that was. How was she to know—she hadn't even graduated from high school, let alone studied the weather patterns of California's most remote area, even more secluded than Oxnard.

Anyway, Michelle was pathetically excited by the change in pace created by the darker, more twister skies—just as she liked it. For Heaven's sake, she'd come from Vegas, and this was nothing compared to some of the bars she'd woken up in (alone) (naked) (and twenty one-dollar bills richer). So after recovering from the lightening, she walked over to the rundown kitchenette in the guesthouse, with its boiling fridge and lukewarm oven, and reached up to get herself a mug. Which she would, naturally, fill with whatever alcoholic liquor first struck her line of vision. As if on queue, the power died out, causing Michelle to nearly throw one of Fanny's mugs at the ground; her fight-or-flight reaction a blessing and a curse.

"Alright, let's reason," She began assertively, blindly speaking at Mother Nature herself. "You put that electricity thing back on and I'll pretend to enjoy sweating through my leotards in July. Oh! I'll even try to reduce my footprint—I'll do what the Chinese do, tie my feet up like little presents and turn these massive sixe eights into size fives!" She wrinkled her nose, looking down at her feet, but of course all Michelle saw was darkness. "Is that how that works?" She inquired, to no one in particular.

Just then, another flash of light erupted in the sky and like something out of a horror film Sasha's face appeared pressed up against the building's glass window, her eyes wide with terror and her skin paler than any vampire drag queen Michelle had encountered on the job.

As though her sight were obstructed with a spray bottle of mace, she channeled any acting chops she still had and impersonated a blind woman, hands out grasping for the handle on her front door.

Not two seconds after Michelle had successfully undone the lock, Sasha flicked on a flashlight, illuminating her face, somehow making it even scarier than before.

"What in the name of Godot is going on here? Wait, come in, or you'll sprout fins and grow those gill things that let you breathe under water only and then you'll have to do ballet in a bubble, which just isn't practical…sorry, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Why the Hell are you here?"

Once her monologue was completed, Michelle realized two things, that the power had been restored during her soliloquy and that Sasha had already invited herself in, shutting the door behind her, and stood trembling in front of Michelle, resembling a sopping Eeyore: desolate and drenched in (rain)water.

The younger girl took a shallow breath and rapidly said, "I was in my room practicing on the barre like you used to do and like I do every night now and it started to rain and I cannot be settled unless everything is dead silent so I kind of curled up on the bed and realized that with me there was something slimy and wet—turns out it was just a leaf, but still—and then as the lights flickered off the oven beeped and it felt like a horror movie and I don't think I can breathe and," She took a deep breath, the first since her run-on sentence's start, "scone?"

"Ooh what kind?" Michelle stopped herself, mentally palming her forehead. A clearly disturbed and lonely girl comes to you for solace in the midst of a storm and you ask about her breakfast pastries? What? When did she find time to conjure ginger scones out of thin air?

"Ginger," Sasha sighed, confirming her teacher's assumption. "Can I stay with you tonight? I think I can't handle the apartment yet…and Roman cannot know about this." Her dark eyes became murky with intensity. "Seriously, he'd never take me seriously again. Oh, and can I ask you something?"

Michelle, still shaken, buzzed around to get the jitters out of her system. "Sure, but first, let me put on some hot water. How's tea, you look tea? I like tea. Tea is a marvelous drink and a marvelous letter, don't you agree? Oh my gosh now I'm rhyming, help!" She tended to ramble when, well; all of the time.

"Let's get you some pajamas. Pick a color, any color," Michelle offered, throwing shirts of orange, blue, and black at a puzzled Sasha.

"OK," Michelle finally said, sitting down next to the fragile girl on her couch and putting on her maternal voice. Sasha needed her, not to be a friend, but to be someone to look up to. She put the blue shirt and a pair of sweatpants in the girl's hands. "So what I'm getting at here is that—and correct me if I'm wrong—I'm not trying to be blunt, but—you're afraid of thunderstorms?"

A single, curt nod of Sasha's head proved Michelle's theory to be correct. "They make my stupid brain come up with every possible murder plot or worst case scenario and have it play out in my head at night and I can never sleep or else I get night terrors, which is sort of why my mother hates me."

Michelle raised an eyebrow contemplatively, and Sasha continued. "I would scream, invariably, in the night and this was my father's excuse to 'get out of the house for awhile', AKA to 'hook up with other men in Paradise'. She claims that if I weren't such a driving force, you know—driving him out of the vicinity, he might have been more committed to staying in bed with _her_."

"Oh, Sasha—" Michelle cooed.

The girl cringed at the thought of sympathy and stood up. "I'm going to get changed," she announced, slipping into the bathroom and returning moments later in Michelle's baggy

"Hot," She smirked, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. "Can't imagine why you gave these flattering PJs up." Sasha was just teasing, and Michelle knew it—it was the girl's way of dealing with pent-up emotions of any kind, in this case **hurt.**

"Yeah," the teacher replied drily. "It's always fashion week over here at…" she looked over at the eccentric cat clock on the wall "…twelve thirty in the morning. Come on, you've got rehearsal tomorrow and I have a date with a new spot to learn and a cappuccino."

Sasha retorted, "I thought you were banned from the coffee shop? Anyway, you're into commercials—since when?"

Blushing, which was odd for a performer of her standards, Michelle answered, "just now. I thought I'd broaden my horizons, bring a little spice and flavor to this town." She finished her sentence in her best French accent, presumably mimicking the food network's emphasis on foreign cuisine.

An awkward fifteen minutes later, once tea and scones were downed and consumed and all but one light were shut off, Sasha stood before Michelle. If the lamp beside them had been on, she would have noticed the single tear trickling down her student's cheek.

"Am I going to be OK?" She whispered. "Can I live on my own? I don't think I can do it!" She confessed, her puppy dog eyes melting Michelle, who was torn between sharing the harsh realities of life through personal experience, and telling the girl that it would all turn out fine in the end. She settled for the latter.

In as soothing a voice as she could muster, Michelle said, "of course everything will work out. More people care about you than you know—you can pull your parents out of the equation, I did and look where I am—" Sasha narrowed her eyes, and Michelle acknowledged that the girl had a valid objection. "OK, not the point, but not all adults are superheroes. Sometimes the kids have to stand up and fight for themselves, but that's not always a bad thing. There would be many fewer problems if people listened to you than looked down on you. But, if you ever think that you can't deal with it, guess what?"

She let the anticipation build up, and then Michelle whispered, "I'm afraid of the dark. Storms, on the other hand, I love despite their blackened skies. As long as I have light, the world outside could be carved out of coal for all I care, but once my power dies out, it's 'I'm about to be raped and stabbed' until the lights come back on.

"Impressive," Sasha noted, and then received a terribly unsuspecting gift from Michelle.

The older girl wrapped her arms around Sasha, who was now freely expressing her doubts, and hugged her until her breathing became less ragged.

"Thank you," She choked, clearing her throat so the impenetrable Sasha couldn't be made to admit she'd cried. She had done some regrettable things, including dabbling in cheerleading, but this was something that she would die before coming clean about—having cried, having been vulnerable.

"Any time, kid," Michelle responded. Swallowing her pride and accepting the fact that she was no longer 21, she tucked Sasha into bed and then climbed into her own, the porcelain mug of the past now long forgotten.

"Oh!" She exclaimed suddenly, "What was your question? Maybe I can mull it over while my body's on spring break."

The tone of Sasha's voice came out meekly and thin when she asked, seriously, of Michelle, "do I drive people away?"

There was no hesitation in Michelle's reply, only the hint of a yawn from fatigue. "You're intriguing. The people who say that don't know what they're missing."

Not another word was uttered until Michelle woke up at 4 in the morning, groaning, and thought, 'if I were her mother, I'd fake dementia just to be under Sasha's care', prior to falling back asleep.

Unbeknownst to her, she'd muttered this out loud in her tired haze, and Sasha too was conscious, smiling wanly to herself before sinking further into the cushions beneath her on Michelle's couch.

She wasn't really scared of thunderstorms. (anymore)


End file.
